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Beverly La Salle’s Final Appearance in Edith’s Crisis of Faith.

Matt Baume | September 22, 2025



In the last Culture Cruise video, I talked about how the show All in the Family introduced Beverly LaSalle, presenting a female impersonator as being worthy of love and respect at a time when TV tended to depict queer people as mere punch lines. But Beverly was also one of the first queer characters on television to come back for more than one episode, growing closer to the Bunkers over the course of years… until her storyline took a dark turn.

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Watch my video about Beverly’s first appearance: https://youtu.be/Szn21n1iWdw
All in the Family also has an episode about gay marriage: https://youtu.be/_6HYnz2ToFg
How Sitcoms Handled Homos in the 70s and 80s: https://youtu.be/LpuJb9MnZDE

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Get the full series of All in the Family: https://amzn.to/35nXKvA

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Written by Matt Baume

Comments

This post currently has 49 comments.

  5. @AlleneQuincy

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    (22:10) it’s not about “advancing a straight character’s plot:” ALL guest stars and co-stars advance a LEAD character’s plot… once leads played gay characters from 2012, on, (and EVERY single show had a gay romance those years), straight-playing guest stars then advanced the gay LEADS’s (series regular) plots…

  6. @rsvy91368

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    I knew a few women when I was a Christian that were accepting kind and loving. I went to the First Presbyterian Church in Willard Ohio and there were a few Christians that had a good heart in the congregation. Edith reminded me of them.

  10. @standupphilosopher7059

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    Jean Stapleton was a dynamic actress, you could feel the depth of her pain. I loved Edith's heart❤ Beverly/ Lori Shannon was played with such intelligence and humor. I agree he humanized queer people for 1970's audiences and that a gay character shouldnt die for a straight characters storyline. Beverly was wonderful ✨

  12. @richardpape5546

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    Edith Bunker was the most amazing tv character. She saw good in everyone. When Norman Lear decided to end Ediths life, Jean said to Norman, you know she is just a fictional character. Lear replied…she isn't to me. She reminded me of my own grandmother. She had the very same goodness and kindness, hahaha not as naive. She passed away on my 16th birthday. And like Edith, had such a positive effect on everyone she met. I miss you every day, Grandma.

  13. @bjt81366

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    Yo, get over yourself, complaining about a truly ground shattering TV moment in the early 70s that was brave enough to create this is 2000s rhetoric. The thanks to this show needs to go to Carroll O'Connor who was steeped in civil rights and pushed for this. With depictions in the show right or wrong or the far left positions of anybody in the US. For those times the masterpiece in television production. You have to evolve. It isn't automatically going to be 2024 at the end of the show. It is still the 7th. You make comparisons between three generations, five decades. That isn't fair to the folks that put a show together, but they did not have to do. Speaking apart things that seem odd today that was normal then is a little petty.

  19. @ken-yv3id

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    I do think that bury your gays is a problem of today. Tropes become tropes because they work. With shows today, the trope fails because most people see gay people as just people. in the 70s, gay people were not in the spotlight beyond highlighting their gayness, usually as a negative. I think that this kind of trope actually is quite effective when done correctly and at the right time, like AitF did. Back then, you could have annual characters on sitcoms be remembered, like Roseanne's grandmother on Thanksgiving, for example, be remembered by the audience pretty well. they introduced Beverly, brought her back for a light hearted episode, then give him a heart breaking ending. The growth that the characters have with the Beverly is believable by that point and while yes it's from the straight person's perspective when he dies,

    I think that's the point here. The average person watching tv at home likely found the episode heart breaking as well and maybe doesn't outright change their whole outlook, does move the needle and give them something to think about at a time that had normalized violence against LGBT people. AitF didn't speak on the morality of homosexuality directly as a talking point, beyond what you'd expect to hear, but the point was to humanize Beverly and to make it so much harder for the viewer to hear "all because he was different" and realize that he didn't deserve what happened to him. Bury your gays is a very good trope in the context of humanizing the individual queer character through the personal tragedy that the straight characters experience. The whole thing only works when the minority character is first humanized by the characters and audience. It will never work when the characters and audience already humanize the character in the first place, because that fails the point of the trope.

  23. @kevingrover8316

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    If the police raid that happened in PA the other day at a drag show is any idea of whats coming we'll be fighting this war again and this is disgusting that we are gonna have too fight this war all over again. They're targeting the black community as a whole aswell. Starting too basically call for Marshall law in black communities. Thank you Donald Trump for taking us into America's turn at nazi Germany

  24. @katieoberst490

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    I'm in a wheelchair, and this "bury your gays" trope also applies to people like me, people with disabilities. "My" people get either movies that are tragedy porn or their characters are killed off to further the development of another able bodied character. The queer community does a GREAT job of protesting things like this, but even when people with disabilities protest, it rarely makes much of a change because we're not heard. Our voices don't matter to the community at large. I really hope that changes someday.

  27. @ScottyDo423

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    Literally cried at some of the clips. When I was a kid in the 90's I would stay up to watch All In The Family which was syndicated to run at 11pm (and then M*A*S*H at 11:30). I don't remember any of the Beverly episodes.

  29. @rob-time

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    I remember watching this show and these episodes with my parents. I was SO uncomfortable because my dad was the essence of Archie Bunker and I was just coming to realize that I was gay and terrified they would find out.  
    It was the first time I really felt consequential fear, in my life.
    What I didn't know was that they knew that I was gay long before I did. They even invited one of my Dad's flamboyantly gay co-workers over to the house and insisted that I was in attendance, under the guise of helping them be good hosts.
    They were trying to tell me, it's ok. Sadly, I never learned that lesson until I was much, much older and they had already died with me never coming out to them. That was my loss. Thanks for doing this video.

  30. @michaelmoore2591

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    It must be said that Jane Stapleton was an amazing actress! In both of these episodes she proves what kindness and compassion can do! Not only did she teach the characters in the show but change was made through this to parter!

  33. @slypperyfox

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    I was a “fresh out of residency” newly minted MD and started in Covington, Ga where “In the Heat of the Night” was filmed. The group I joined were the contract docs for the production. I was assigned to hang out on the set and spent a lot of time with Carol O’Connor. He was a very nice guy and we spent a lot of time chatting in his trailer. Hard NJ accent in real life. Very different from A Bunker’s NY or his southern accent from ITHOTN.

  34. @maikeweige1548

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    I agree with the later ones being used for advancing str8 ppl.

    But I don't think that is what happened with all I the family. In this episode they weren't advancing Edith they were addressing reality and what was happening and was in the news a lot in the 70s and early 80s

  35. @michelsurprenant4799

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    I was a 15yo canadian when this aired. Gay bars were 'illegal" often being raided by the police. All in the family was a crucial element of my education. I just cried as much as I did when I first saw this episode.
    Thank you for telling the story.

  36. @fayewitt9881

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    Edith's Crisis of Faith was a very sad episode because nobody deserves to die simply because of what they are. It was pure evil is what took the life of Beverly LaSalle simply because of what she was, a female imperanater. I'm sure there's people out there that don't agree with things like this and I can't say that I'm for it but I wouldn't kill somebody just because I don't agree with what they do cause it's wrong I believe you can disagree with something somebody does without hurting them but as long as you don't try to take it further than that we all have a right to our own options as long as there's not taken further than that.

  37. @paulp.6555

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    I agree with everything you said, with the exception of Beverly's death, was to advances Edith's character. Edith was the center of the three episode arc that featured Beverly so when she died it was focused on Ediths loss of a friend.

  39. @labenbrittenum6934

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    it’s crazy how a show over 50 years old is still being analyzed..i’m not sure if a generation that wasn’t around to feel the impact of AITF when it first aired can totally understand how groundbreaking it really was..i was very young but even then knew something was different about the show

  40. @staggerlee606

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    Keep in mind the death of Oscar was treated the same way. The show revolved around how his death affected the family and not about Oscar’s death itself. The show focuses on the family, not on secondary or supporting characters. This also aired midway through season 8 which was going to be the final season (one more season aired before the spinoff Archie Bunker’s place started to sir). All in the Family chose to use Beverly to discuss a real issue that was unheard of to talk about on TV outside of on the news. Violence against the LGBTQIA community.

  42. @johndalton3180

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    "That sophisticated woman" was Sada Thompson. She was originally hired to play Irene Lorenzo, but after a few days of rehearsal, for whatever reason, she and Norman Lear agreed it wasn't quite working.

  45. @marmichaux7520

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    It was such a shock and shame how Beverly started out as Archie saving his life, only to be murdered.
    I was just a little girl when that final Beverly Christmas episode aired, and it was so sad. Edith refusing to go to church,& being angry at God really hit you in the feels.

  46. @fayelisa6454

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    That’s how black people have been written in scripts for years. We’re either killed off quickly, a token or if we get close to being a main character we’re serving or rooting on white love. That’s why we have BET because when you think of a main character or a love story unless you say it’s a black movie, you know 90% of the time it’s going to be white.

  47. @jeremybaker195

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    Jean Stapleton was an amazing actor. Her face when the Dr. Said Beverly died. She had so many subtle emotions in that one 20 30 second look.
    That one scene really shows what she can do. She really makes you feel for Edith.😢
    😍🤩
    I loved that show growing up. Pretty ground breaking all around.🙌👏🙌👏🙌👏

  48. @Texasjim2007

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    A few days prior to this episode on December 9, 1977 the 19 year old David Paul Talsma became one of John Gacy's 33 murder victims. Statistically homosexuals are far more likely to be murdered by other homosexuals than by heterosexuals engaging in a hate crime for the same reason the vast majority of interracial murders are by members of the same race… identity group members tend to associate mostly with other members of the same identity group. Mike's assumption that the muggers murdered LaSalle because they somehow realized he was gay during the fight is pretty likely a false assumption based on what we're told about what happened. LaSalle wasn't wearing any female clothes when he went out with Mike and wasn't in fact the target of the attack, Mike was. LaSalle only got involved jumping in to help Mike who was the original target. The fact that they ignored Mike to double team on LaSalle was more likely because LaSalle was bigger and tougher than Mike which Mike obviously was reluctant to admit to himself. That's what's wrong with identity group politics in general. You guys let these Left wing activists like Mike manipulate you like a bunch of People's Temple cultists. Harvey Milk was not murdered in a hate crime over his greater support for Gay Rights than his assassin who Milk took the job of because Mayor Moscone who was killed in the same assassination wanted to pander to Gay voters in San Francisco like Jerry Brown did getting charges dropped for an arrest of his political supporter People's Temple cult leader Jim Jones for trying solicit sex in a men's room. Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone were murdered by Dan White because they screwed up his personal life. Congressman Leo Ryan was not murdered by the People's Temple cult shortly before the Milk-Moscone assassination because he was trying to persecute a religious minority but because he was trying to help members of an insane mass suicide cult leave it. La Salle performed a burlesque act in drag like Flip Wilson's Josephine, but let's note that it was never actually stated that he was actually attracted to risking death by AIDS for some anal sex fetish like the prison rapists of Clyde Barrow or had any oral sex fetish like Bill Clinton. He may have actually just been a transvestite or a show business ham putting on an act like Milton Berle. He never self-identified on the show as "Gay" unlike Billy Chrystal's Jodie Dallas character on "Soap" which had been airing for months at the time of LaSalle's murder. Contrary to all your identity group politics we're all individuals more than anything else. That's what we all have most in common.

  49. @dashfatbastard

    September 22, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    Matt, thank you for your work. It's a joybtonsee someone perceptive recognize the beauty and the horrors of TV archeology. The shocking turn of Beverly's death really hurt to see. People forget that she saved Mike Stivick's life…I thought the episode would revolve around his survivor's guilt, but Edith's reaction was deeply shocking and painful to view. She lost someone who helped open her world….a brother and a sister 🙂 The rupture in Edith's spirituality was heartbreaking.

    It was no accident that she was able to metabolize her cousin's relationship because of Beverly.

    AITF was such a seminal show. There's a definitive line between TV before and afterward. It's a shame some of the rougher territory the show engaged in has left it to the dead zone of free streaming on Pluto and similar services. It should be celebrated.

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